Seattle Genetics Trial Fills Up

Seattle Genetics, the Bothell, WA-based developer of cancer drugs, said today that it has completed enrollment in the pivotal clinical trial of its lead product candidate, brentuxmab vedotin (SGN-35). The trial recruited 100 patients with relapsed forms of Hodgkin’s disease. The enrollment period was about six months faster than the company expected, so Seattle Genetics expects to have results from the trial sooner as well, by the second half of 2010. The speed of the enrollment helped Seattle Genetics raise $136 million in a stock offering, as we described in this recent feature story.

Author: Luke Timmerman

Luke is an award-winning journalist specializing in life sciences. He has served as national biotechnology editor for Xconomy and national biotechnology reporter for Bloomberg News. Luke got started covering life sciences at The Seattle Times, where he was the lead reporter on an investigation of doctors who leaked confidential information about clinical trials to investors. The story won the Scripps Howard National Journalism Award and several other national prizes. Luke holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and during the 2005-2006 academic year, he was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT.